Japan’s first live firing of a Tomahawk cruise missile has drawn an answer from the top of North Korea’s ruling family. Kim Yo Jong, sister of leader Kim Jong Un, said in a statement carried by state media on Wednesday that Pyongyang would set up additional military options in response to Japan’s expanding strike capabilities.
The trigger was Tokyo’s test of a US-made Tomahawk from the Aegis destroyer JS Chokai in the Pacific on July 29, the first time Japan has fired the missile. Tokyo ordered 400 Tomahawks after revising its security doctrine in December 2022 to include counterstrike capability, a break with decades of strictly defensive policy, and deliveries began this year. The test turned a paper capability into a demonstrated one.
Kim’s statement, issued through KCNA, was blunt about what Japan has become. She called it a war criminal state whose possession of preemptive attack capability was a grave threat to global peace and security, accused Tokyo of racing to transform itself into a war state, and said Pyongyang would never remain a passive onlooker to Japan’s military evolution. She put the blame for the test squarely on Washington, saying the United States supplied the missiles, remodeled a warship to operate them, and provided the conditions and location for the firing. She accused Japan of shedding its defensive posture for armed forces built for preemptive attack and overseas operations, and argued that the new long-range capabilities put North Korea and its neighbors within range.
She also took aim at the constitutional ground of the buildup. Japan’s moves to acquire preemptive attack capability, she argued, run contrary to international law and to a constitution that renounces war potentials and belligerency. She dismissed Japan’s self-image as a peace-loving state as a camouflaged tactic covering an ambition to become a military giant, and said the preemptive strike push had entered the stage of actual action. Reuters noted the words were the sharpest she has aimed at Tokyo in months.
The Tomahawk test was not the only grievance on the list. Kim also cited Japan’s other missile test-firings and its participation in a US-led joint military drill in the Philippines in May. The statement is part of a campaign running since July, when KCNA began publishing editorials and commentaries, at least six of them, attacking the trilateral US, South Korean and Japanese security arrangements as a threat to the region.
Analysts read the message as preparation as much as protest. Yang Moo-jin of the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul says Kim is framing Tokyo’s buildup as part of a broader American effort to strengthen proxy military capabilities against the North. Lim Eul-chul of Kyungnam University’s Institute for Far Eastern Studies says the messaging could lay the groundwork for future military demonstrations, including missile tests or displays of undersea strike capabilities.
Japan, for its part, defends the buildup as a response to the most severe and complex security environment since the end of World War II, and its latest defense white paper, published days earlier, describes North Korean military activity as a more grave and imminent threat to Japan than ever before. Each side’s reasoning feeds the other: Tokyo arms because Pyongyang threatens, and Pyongyang threatens because Tokyo arms. The test made the loop visible, and neither side shows any interest in stepping off it.